Even for a musical released towards the tail end of the
genre's golden age, the film did incredibly well, even going as far as winning the Best Picture Oscar (the last musical to do so until 2002's Chicago).

Carol Reed's film is a splendid piece of work, doing
justice to both the stage musical and the original novel, with Ron Moody stealing the picture as master pickpocket Fagin. Oliver Reed also delivers his finest ever performance as the story's
true villain, Bill Sykes. The cast of children are all fantastic, though Mark Lester's pure & chaste title character is most certainly upstaged by Jack Wild's performance as cheeky
scoundrel The Artful Dodger.

It does drag a little in places around the mid-section,
but this is truly one of the great film musicals and arguably the finest ever adaptation of Charles Dickens' works.